Board starts planning 10th anniversary of Friendship-Association

In September 2005, our friendship-association was officially founded. Before, there had been an action committee (“Neuwied helps to help”) that started its work only a few weeks after the terrible tsunami. Central coordinators of this committee were our Lord Mayor of Neuwied, Mr. Nikolaus Roth; the then manager of Lohmann-company in Neuwied-Feldkirchen, Mr. Manfred Mayer; Mr. Sagara Abegunewardene whose roots are in Sri Lanka; and teachers and principals of schools in Neuwied. Their initiatives and decisiveness enabled spontaneous help, the first visit of the island in July 2005, the first building project, and so the foundation of a registered association was a logical result and a lucky decision.
We have always reported and published our activities and projects in newspapers and here on this site. For more than ten years now, we have worked in a highly committed way with regard to schools and the education of students from economically weak families in Matara.
We are going to celebrate this tenth anniversary of the foundation of our Friendship-Association-Neuwied-Matara, and we want to show our members and visitors that we have not yet come to an end of our commitment. Meanwhile, there are helpful relationships, structural developments that make us turn our support into the right direction and give it to those who most deserve it. And we will not become tired of maintaining contacts and relationships with schools, teachers, students, parents and friends in Matara.
We are aware of the fact that there are lots of trouble spots all over the world where enormous help should and must be given. Let’s hope that there will be organized associations or individuals establishing the same or similar structures of support as we did ten years ago and are still doing.
There is a lot more that we can and want to do, although there are not many donations any more. Of course, we can still use annual membership fees of our approximately one hundred members and some sporadic and generous donations from time to time, to continue our help for schoolchildren in Matara.That is why we want to celebrate this tenth anniversary on Saturday, September 26th, with our members, friends, supporters, visitors and those who may have become curious to learn more about our association. We invite all of them to come between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. to the Adult Education Centre (VHS), Neuwied. Our visitors will be given lots of information with regard to quantity and quality of our activities and projects. Besides, they will be shown the beauty of the island Sri Lanka that they might visit one day, and they might even taste some Srilankan food.
We would like to welcome lots of visitors and make them understand the necessity of our work; we would like to offer them information, particularly about scholarships that help at least some students to face their future. And finally, why not become a new member and supporter?